


The Tired Edge of the Galaxy

by Carmarthen



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Tatooine (Star Wars), Teen Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: A few years before the events of "Prisoner of Conscience," Imperial Lieutenant Marcus Aquila, posted unhappily to the Anchorhead garrison on Tatooine, almost manages to make a friend. (Luke Skywalker, wide-eyed moisture farmer, develops a crush.)
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Marcus Flavius Aquila, Luke Skywalker/Marcus Flavius Aquila
Comments: 16
Kudos: 19





	The Tired Edge of the Galaxy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Prisoner of Conscience](https://archiveofourown.org/works/583542) by [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen). 



> This was originally part of a Five Things story about people Marcus didn't sleep with in this AU, but this was the only one that really gelled with me as being interesting, so since I'm back in a Star Wars mood and feeling nostalgic about "Prisoner of Conscience," which was tied for most fun I had writing in Eagle fandom, I figured I'd clean it up a bit and post it.
> 
> Luke's puppy crush is entirely one-sided here and not the focus of the story; I think it's more gen than anything else.

The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, a fresh-faced kid with a mop of fair hair and eager eyes. “I’m thinking about applying to the Academy soon,” he said, leaning on Marcus’s desk. “Do you have any advice?”

Marcus knew what he was supposed to say—there was a standard recruitment script for situations like this. He was supposed to tell the kid about the glory of serving the Empire, about the excitement of flying your own fighter, about opportunity and honor and everything else on the recruitment posts. The Academy would eat him alive, a naive farmboy like this. Most of the men—and the few women—who went for officer training or flight school came from urbanized Core worlds. They hadn’t been friendly to Marcus, from the Colonies, and they’d be less friendly to a kid from the Outer Rim. If he didn’t wash out of basic training and if he didn't get sent off to be canon fodder, they’d likely send him to another mined-out, desolate desert hellhole on the tired edge of the galaxy, to a shitty desk job like Marcus’s own. “It’s pretty competitive,” he said, neutrally, and then, “There are other ways to get offplanet, you know—working a freighter, say.”

The boy looked down. “I guess. My friend Biggs wants to go to the Academy, though.”

Marcus had gone to the Academy with a friend, too, and now that friend was stardust, blown to bits by Rebels, and he was stuck on a planet worse than the one he’d grown up on. 

Outside, a man’s voice called “Luke! Where the hell did you get to?” 

The kid—Luke—yelled back “Coming, Uncle Owen!” He smiled at Marcus as he left, a bright, open smile that made Marcus feel horribly old.

"What were you doing in there?" Marcus heard Luke's uncle say, his voice growing harder to hear as they moved away. "You need to stay on task, boy, not filling your head with nonsense...."

* * *

But despite his uncle's wishes, Luke kept coming back. He hung around the garrison office, talking about shooting womp rats and the old T-16 landspeeder he was refurbishing with his friend Biggs. It was kind of nice, really, although sometimes Marcus wanted to roll his eyes.

And he kept asking about the Academy. Marcus told him a little bit, the parts that didn’t seem too glamorous or too awful. “How’d you end up here, anyway?” Luke asked. “You should be flying a fighter!”

“Sorry,” he said, at the look on Marcus’s face. “None of my business.”

So Marcus told him about General Aquila, who’d commanded an entire legion of troopers during the Clone Wars, one of handful of generals who wasn’t a Jedi, just a regular military officer. They’d been sent to drive the separatists away from one of the Inner Rim planets, Caledon, but something had gone wrong. “Communications went dead. And there was something—something was wrong with the maps. The scouting mission that went after them couldn’t find the planet where the coordinates said it was. It was like it had disappeared into a wrinkle in space.”

“Maybe it did,” Luke said.

Marcus shook his head. “That’s impossible. Superstition. Anyway, I guess someone decided like father, like son, and didn’t want to risk me on anything important.”

“That’s not fair!” Luke cried, sounding all of sixteen again.

 _Life isn’t fair,_ Marcus thought, but he just shrugged. Luke would figure that out soon enough, when he realized he wasn’t getting offworld, that he was going to be a moisture farmer like his cranky uncle, bitter and worn out before his time.

* * *

“Marcus,” Luke said, leaning closer. He was obviously nervous, smiling too much and wiping his hands on his tunic. “We’re friends, right?”

“Sure,” Marcus said cautiously. It was true, but also a sign of how pathetic his life was, that the closest thing he had to a friend on this dustball was a teenaged moisture farmer who had barely started shaving.

“So, um, would you like to get a drink sometime?”

It could have been a perfectly ordinary offer between friends, but Luke was so nervous, Marcus knew it wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” he said as gently as he could. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Oh,” Luke said, his face falling. Marcus felt like he had kicked a small animal, which was probably a sign he had made the right decision. Luke was far, far too young, and not really his type anyway. “I see. Well, I guess I’d better go find Uncle Owen.”

Marcus nodded and watched Luke go, his shoulders slumped. He was young; he’d get over it.

* * *

Luke stopped coming around the garrison office after that, although once Marcus ran into him in Tosche Station, when he took his speeder in for servicing. Luke and a knot of other kids were hanging around the mechanic’s shop.

“Marcus!” Luke said. 

The girl sitting next to him went wide-eyed, and one of the other boys said, “You know _him,_ Luke?”

“I guess,” Luke said. “You know I want to apply to the Academy.”

One of the boys said, “Oh, come on, Wormie—” but the girl punched him in the arm and he shut his mouth.

“Introduce us, Luke,” she said, in a husky, mocking voice.

There were introductions, and then awkward small talk while the mechanic went over Marcus’s speeder. After he paid, he heard the girl’s voice raised as he was driving away, “I can’t believe you were hanging around that Imp, Wormie! What, did you think you’d have a better chance of getting into the Academy if you suck up to the local commander? You know they never send anyone _important_ out here.” He couldn't hear Luke's muttered reply. The laughter that followed sounded on cruel to Marcus's ear, but if these were who Luke called friends, that was Luke's business, even if he deserved better. Maybe Marcus was wrong and the kid would manage to get himself off Tatooine. Maybe he'd take all that bright shiny enthusiasm and make something of himself, like in the adventure holos Marcus had watched as a child, imagining his father would reappear one day covered with honor and with a wild tale to tell like the hero of _Lost Caverns of Plawal._

Maybe Marcus would get reassigned to a post on a world with some trees. Maybe banthas would fly.

That was the last time Marcus saw the naive farmboy.

* * *

_"If there's a bright center of the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from."_  
—Luke Skywalker, _Star Wars: A New Hope_

**Author's Note:**

> Boy, Marcus actually manages to be even more grim about his post here than in the original story, despite that being the one where he has a crisis of conscience.


End file.
